


No Time to Say

by anneapocalypse



Series: A Little More Forthcoming [5]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Followers of the Apocalypse, NCR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:45:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one saw the Courier's betrayal coming, least of all Julie and Elizabeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Time to Say

She’d like to say she saw it coming, as if that knowledge would allow that she might’ve changed it. But she didn’t. She didn’t see it at all. None of them did.

All in all, it had been expected that the NCR would win at the Dam. A few months back, victory had seemed dubious, but so much had improved since then. Higher troop morale, better food and supplies, reinforcements from California. And whether or not the NCR was the best option for the Mojave, well that was what her mother would’ve called a  _fool question_ ; there was no best option, only a lot of bad ones and some less bad ones and the NCR  _needed_  to defeat the Legion at the Dam, that much was certain. And by the time Caesar’s forces attacked, odds were good they would win.

Julie had felt it was probably better not to examine too closely why she suddenly felt personally invested in the NCR’s victory, but there was no denying that she was.

Word of the Courier’s betrayal spread even before an army of Securitrons rolled out of House’s bunker, a solid deployment making for the Dam, while the rest fanned west across the Mojave, ready to enforce his claim.

Word of what exactly he’d done came later—how he’d held back until the NCR troops had succeeded in pushing back Legion forces, and then presented General Oliver with the ultimatum: immediate and complete withdrawal, or annihilation—but it wasn’t hard to figure it out.

She couldn’t leave the Fort, of course, not with wounded pouring in from the street riots, survivors bearing the horrific souvenirs of the new Securitrons’ “crowd control techniques.” Vicious laser burns, missing or mangled limbs, internal injuries sustained from being just that close to a rocket’s target, not quite close enough to die. Arcade and Mona set up triage in the street, right off the north gate of the Strip itself, where the riots had been less severe—though there was talk of a mob attempting to set fire to the Lucky 38 - but the response the most devastating.

When things had started to get bad, Julie had taken Emily aside and told her that if she knew anything that might work to shut the robots down, now would be the time to use it; the time for being law-abiding citizens was past. But with the new upgrades, not only was Emily’s knowledge of the bots outdated, she couldn’t get close enough to learn anything.

In the midst of all that, when there were so many injured staggering in that they stopped bothering to close the gate, Beth appeared, her squad behind her, a single duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

There wasn’t time for words. There wasn’t time for anything. There wasn’t time for Julie to be standing here, every second a needling horror that people were dying behind her because she was standing here staring into the eyes of a woman she was never going to see again while everything they’d worked for burned around them.

When Beth kissed her, it wasn’t soft as so many of their encounters had been. It was fierce and terrible, as though it could dam between them the flood of chaos that had been released that day. And it was sharp, and short, because it could not.

When they pulled back, all Beth said was, “I’m sorry.”

“You always tell me not to say that,” Julie whispered. Didn’t mean to whisper, but it was all she could find of her voice.

Beth’s eyes glistened in the dusty light. “I know.”

She wrapped her hand around Julie’s, squeezed even as she withdrew and let her fingers fall away.

Then she was gone, and Julie sandbagged the fresh assault of grief and buried herself in the urgency clamoring around her.

**Author's Note:**

> Update 2/10/16: There's a sequel!


End file.
